The present invention is related to computer systems and computer peripheral devices. In particular, the present invention is related to printers and combination printer/scanner/fax machines.
Several current trends are affecting the current designs of computer system products. One trend is that televisions and entertainment centers are increasingly intelligent. In other words, televisions and entertainment centers now include microprocessor control . Microprocessors are also becoming more capable as well as more affordable. Today""s microprocessors are more able than ever before and can handle large numbers of different types of operations in parallel. These microprocessors are being designed into all sorts of individual appliances as well as individual stereo components. In a typical home entertainment system there may very well be a number of different microprocessors in the different components performing the same or similar functions.
Another trend is that home entertainment components and computers are merging. One design point associated with this trend is that duplication of functionality is avoided by designing in today""s more powerful microprocessors to integrate the operations for the various home entertainment components. A few short years ago, the idea that televisions and computers would merge seemed to be a prediction thought to be well into the future. Now this prediction has become a reality. One currently available system is a product available from Gateway 2000 called the Destination product.
Gateway 2000""s Destination product is a multipurpose computer system provided with circuitry to control consumer electronics, such as a large monitor or television for group interaction and of text, graphics and video in a home entertainment environment. The merged home entertainment and computer products, such as Gateway 2000""s Destination product are being designed for use in a home entertainment environment since people are using these systems in living rooms rather than home offices. In other words, combining a computer with a home entertainment system has had the effect of moving the home personal computer off of the desk in home office and onto the shelves or into the racks of the home entertainment center in the main living space of the users home. This also means that the peripheral devices normally used with the computers will also be placed on the shelves or in the racks of the users home entertainment center.
Using today""s printers in a home entertainment environment has its problems. Current designs are not conducive to placing a printer on a shelf or in the rack of today""s home entertainment centers. Currently available printers have a paper tray for input of paper and an output tray. Sometimes these two paper trays are on the same side of a printer. Such a printer could be used on a shelf in a home entertainment center. However, many other designs use an input tray located at the front of the printer and an output tray located on the backside of the printer. Using this type of printer would require the user to remove the printer from the shelf or rack mount of the home entertainment center each time they wanted paper output. This would be very impractical.
Another design aspect which is not conducive to placing today""s currently available printers in the rack or on the shelf of today""s home entertainment environment is access to the inner housing of the printer to remove paper jams. Access to the mechanical paper handling path usually requires removing large panels or unlatching large portions of the printer and rotating a whole assembly out of the way to enable the user to peer into the deep recesses of the printer in search of a paper jam. The large panels or large assembly portions that are rotated out of the way rarely face the front of the printer. If a current printer is placed in a rack or on a shelf, the user would have to remove the printer from the rack or shelf to clear a paper jam.
Another problem is that current printers require access from the top of the machine to do some of the more routine maintenance chores such as changing a toner cartridge in a laser printer or changing the ink wells on an ink jet. The user that places such a printer in a home entertainment center would then be required to remove the printer from the rack or the shelf of the home entertainment center to perform routine maintenance.
Still another problem is that the control buttons and printer status buttons are almost always placed on the top side of the printer. If the shelves are tightly spaced, as they are in a rack or on the shelves of a home entertainment center, it is difficult to see the control buttons or status indicators. A paper jam or an indication that a printer is out of paper may go undetected for quite some time just because the status indicators can not be seen.
Printers are also now being provided with the capability to act as scanners and fax machines. There are many products on the market that combine all or some of these capabilities. The problems spoken of above with respect to printers are also associated with these combination products, such as printer/scanner/fax machines.
As more users move their computer systems from the desktop in the home office to the home entertainment center in the main living space, demand for a printer or printer combined with a scanner and fax that is more conducive to being mounted in the rack or on the shelf of a home entertainment center will increase. What is needed is a printer that has both the input paper tray and the output paper tray toward the front of the printer. What is also needed is a printer or combination printer/scanner/fax having the mechanical paper path and imaging apparatus accessible from the front of the printer or combination machine. This would allow the user to clear paper jams and do some routine maintenance without having to remove the printer or combination machine from the rack or shelf of the home entertainment center. There is also a need for a printer or combination machine which has the control buttons and status indicators on the front of the machine so that the status can be checked or the combination machine can be controlled more easily in the home entertainment environment. There is also a need for a printer or combination machine dimensioned so that it fits comfortably in a rack or on a shelf of an entertainment center. There is also a need to provide for a printer that can be stacked along with other components found in today""s home entertainment environment.
A printer includes a housing which has a user access surface. Attached within the housing is a printer which includes a paper path. The printer also includes a paper input tray and a paper output tray. Both the paper trays are accessible from the user access surface. The user access surface also has an access panel within the user access surface. The paper path is positioned within the housing so that it is accessible through the access panel.
The printer cartridges, which contain the material used to make an image on the paper, such as a toner cartridge for use with a laser printer or one or more ink wells for use with an ink jet printer, are also positioned within the housing of the printer so as to be near the user access surface. The printer cartridges are accessible through the access panel. Optionally, the printer cartridges could also be accessed through a special panel in the user access surface. The user access surface also includes at least one control switch for controlling a function of the printer and a status indicator for indicating the status of the printer so that the function of the printer can be controlled from the user access surface and so that the status indicator can be read from the user access surface of the housing.
Advantageously, users would have a printer or printer/scanner/fax that could be used in a home entertainment center or on a shelf. The printer could be controlled from the user access surface and routine maintenance, such as removing paper jams or changing cartridges of the printer, could also be accomplished from the user access surface. The control buttons and the status buttons could also be actuated and observed from the user access panel. The printer would also have a paper input tray and a paper output tray that could be accessed from the user access surface. In short, the majority of routine tasks that need to take place when using a printer could be accomplished from the user access surface. As a result, most of the time the printer would not have to be removed from the stereo rack or shelf of the home entertainment system. This would also be helpful for users that decide to use the printer as a monitor stand since most tasks could be accomplished from the surface facing the user beneath the monitor.